


Peace Is A Lie

by Velvedere



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e20 Coda, Gen, Sith stuff, dark side Ezra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra has a practice session with the holocron they found in the Sith Temple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace Is A Lie

Ezra eyed the distance between himself and his target.

It was a tree, squat and bare, bleached white under the harsh sun of the planet where the rebellion – such as it was – had finally decided to settle down and establish their new base. Bare of leaves or anything else resembling flora, the tree looked more like an arrangement of bones half buried in the ground from some long-slain beast.

It wasn’t a moving target, but for what Ezra needed, it didn’t have to be.

Ezra took a breath.

He closed his eyes, and held out his hands to either side of him.

Focusing.

He could feel it all around him: the presence of the Force. Even on a place as bare and desolate as this rock, where the whole of the ecosystem seemed to consist of giant carnivorous spiders, an infestation of boguns, and the occasional circling bird, the Force was alive. It was in the air. It was in the ground under his boots. It was even inside him – there – waiting for him to reached deep enough. Like threads connecting him to everything else. Between him and the tree. The tree to the rocks. The rocks to the thing scuttling beneath and around them. Everything else connected to what was beyond. If he concentrated, Ezra could almost feel those threads between his fingers, caressing the palm of his hand like a breeze. Invisible, but there, and very, very real.

He cleared his mind, and seized that connection, pulling hard.

The ground nearby broke. Folded upward. A boulder the size of Chopper pried itself up from beneath the dirt as if struggling to break free, shaking loose dust and pebbles and twisting and snapping the tree roots that would have otherwise held it back.

_…break your chains…_

Ezra threw out his hand, commanding the rock forward. It hurled itself through the air and slammed into the base of the tree, an explosion of displaced dust raising a cloud into the air. It briefly concealed both tree and rock from Ezra’s sight as he blinked his eyes open to see, waving dust away from his face.

The tree still stood, quiet and motionless. A crushing blow had been dealt to its trunk, making it bow, but it was not toppled. Ezra could swear he could hear the tree laughing at him, mocking him even as he glared at it, blowing a hard breath to push strands of dislodged hair from his face.

Frustration made heat waft off the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the hot sun overhead.

It wasn’t _good_ enough.

Ezra rounded his glare on the Sith holocron propped on the ground nearby. It feigned innocence, also sitting there quietly, like it wasn’t daring him just by its presence to try again.

“Big help you are,” Ezra grumbled, pushing a hand back through his hair. “We’ve been at this all day!”

It wasn’t good enough. Ezra had come a long way from levitating empty cups in the Ghost’s common room. He could throw boulders – and even Kanan now – around like they were nothing. But it wasn’t good enough. He had to get better. Stronger.

What good was he to anyone, least of all the rebellion, when he couldn’t even knock over one target?

Ezra glared down at the holocron. Even in bright daylight it seemed to glow. Faintly. A power slumbering inside it that he had glimpsed only a little back in that temple on Malachor. It had been powerful then. Now it was little more than a desk weight.

“So much for power…”

Ezra squatted down over the pyramid-shaped box, picking it up one more time to turn it over in his hands.

He hadn’t missed anything. He’d been over and over every inch of its surface a hundred times already. If he meditated, he could open it, but all he’d found so far were a few old texts and recordings of ancient Sith talking about philosophy or training methods.

Ancient Sith really seemed to have a thing about enormous shoulder armor...

Some of it was interesting, and nothing at all like anything Kanan had ever told him. But it was also nothing at all like he’d seen in the temple. And nothing resembling the fabled “knowledge” he was supposed to find that would help him become strong enough to defeat the Empire.

Kanan hadn’t even tried to open the holocron himself.

“We still might get some use out of it,” he’d said, when Ezra offered it to him. “Keep it. See what you can do. Master Yoda wouldn’t have sent us there for nothing.”

He hadn’t looked at the holocron, even as Ezra held it out in his hand.

Kanan didn’t look at anything anymore.

Ezra stared at him, safe in the knowledge that he could, but also daring. Hoping. Wanting Kanan to be able to tell in some way – whatever way – that he was doing it at all. When Kanan spoke to people now, he did it with his head bowed, or turned slightly away. Never facing them directly. Like it wasn’t right to pretend he could still look other people in the eye.

Ezra hated it.

He wanted to see Kanan there looking back at him. He wanted to catch that glint in his eyes so he would know what he was thinking. Kanan just seemed…more distant now.

Or maybe it was Ezra who was being distant. They’d been home for a few days – Malachor seemed far away now, like an awful nightmare – and he and Kanan had barely spoken beyond what they absolutely had to.

Being around him was…difficult.

“Stop pouting,” Kanan said.

Ezra started, jerking himself out of his stare. He pulled the holocron back to tuck into his belt pouch.

“I wasn’t—” he tried.

“Yes you were. You always get real quiet and still when you’re pouting. You even hold your breath.”

Ezra felt the heat rise in his cheeks. Kanan smirked, the lines in his face reaching all the way up to the blindfold that covered his eyes. But they went no further.

Ezra didn’t have it in him to argue.

Malachor seemed like a lifetime ago. Like a bad dream Ezra had. But the effects weren’t going away.

Rex mourned for Ahsoka. They all did. Kanan spent a lot of time in his bunk, resting, while Hera and the others did everything they could to make him comfortable. There wasn’t much they could do, and every time he emerged Ezra could feel the palpable tension in the others around him. An awkwardness in the air. Like they were making the effort to not treat Kanan any differently than they had before, but didn’t want to act like nothing had changed either.

Or…again…maybe that was Ezra’s own doing. Attributing his own guilty conscience to everyone else.

Nobody once said to him that what happened on Malachor was his fault.

But nobody had to.

That Sith had been the last sight Kanan would ever see. Neither of them deserved that.

The holocron flared with an inner red light in his hand, as if noticing the sick twist of guilt Ezra felt in his stomach. It tended to do that: react to strong emotions.

Ezra would be lying if he said he didn’t know why.

He sighed, and set the holocron down, standing once again to face the stunted tree.

_A Jedi can’t open the holocron,_ the Sith’s raspy voice remained fresh in his memory. _Only a Sith can. Or someone who thinks like one._

Ezra took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, and held out his hands again.

Nobody had said to him that what happened on Malachor was his fault, but nobody had to. Ezra latched onto that: the guilt that stabbed him every time he thought about it. Every time he’d woken up since and realized Malachor hadn’t been just another bad dream. It made him feel sick. It made him feel useless. Weak. Pathetic. Scared that he couldn’t protect his friends. Hate for the ones who had caused this. It made him feel…

It made him feel…

Rage.

_Peace is a lie,_ the holocron had said. _There is only passion._

Rage. Rage that made waves of heat roll through him. Rage that made it difficult to see in a straight line. Rage like a hot blade in his guts, searing. Like being trapped inside too small of a space. Wanting to get out. Wanting to rampage…

_Through passion, I gain strength._

Ezra thought back. He thought about his parents. How scared he’d been when the Imperials came to take them away. His fear for what would happen to him next.

_Through strength, I gain power._

He thought about the Empire. His anger for the lives they destroyed. His anger at himself, now, for not being able to be enough. His inability to keep it from happening. For realizing he was being selfish, even in this. Focusing on himself when the others were also hurting.

_Through power, I gain victory._

He thought of Kanan’s blind eyes.

_Through victory, my chains are broken._

The scream that ripped from him was a scream of frustration, ripped from the very core of his being. Ezra let the rage flow, holding nothing back. He didn’t think. He didn’t hesitate. He acted. He vented the anger and rage and hate and fear the only way he felt he could: lashing out, opening himself to the Force and letting it storm through all of reality. Letting it impose his will on all his surroundings.

When Ezra had first felt the flow of the Force through him, it had been like a trickle.

This…this was a deluge.

And it felt good.

Well…not entirely good. A part of it felt wrong: that nagging sensation in the back of his mind that Kanan had helped put there. Ezra wasn’t naïve. He knew everyone said the dark side was the path to evil, but did a person have to follow a path all the way to its end? The power felt good, but it also felt like a choice. A choice he was willing to make, his awareness open and focused fully ahead.

_The Force shall set me free._

He snapped his eyes open with a shudder, his hands still outstretched. Trembling. Out of breath. He curled in his fingers where he felt a tingle like electricity in their tips, pressing them into his palms. His heart pounded, pain stabbing at the back of his eyes.

He looked at the massive gouge that stretched out before him: great swathes cut in the dirt where, not one, but multiple boulders had ripped themselves up from the ground. They lay now in a crushed pile where the tree had been only a little while before, not even a splinter of it left.

Ezra let his hands drop, shivering at a chill of cold that ran up his back despite the heat of the day.

But he was smiling.

It was a start. He could do this. And he _would_ do this.

He would do whatever he had to in order to make things right.


End file.
